CE-16.21

Title:

SuperCaly App for iOS

Author(s):

Rujoota Shah

Oral Defence Date:

Tuesday, December 20, 2016 - 11:20

Location:

TH 434

Committee:

Prof. Ilmi Yoon & Assistant Prof. Hao Yue

Abstract:

SuperCaly acts like a personal assistant for smart-phone users with smart organizing features. This is a native app developed for iPhone users and works as an extension to Apple calendar. The ultimate goal of SuperCaly is to analyze user’s day-to-day lifecycle and present daily routine and life-patterns in a way so that user can understand his/her life well. Our aim is to create an intuitive and easy-to-use calendar app that is more functional, versatile, informative and intelligent while preserving the traditional event and reminder-focused aspects of calendar apps. SuperCaly helps users to consolidate their events better and manage its attendees, location, chats and media efficiently. It automatically creates events for users by tracking their location and associating media and lets users visualize it with location-timeline like map-view. It also has feature of syncing with existing apple calendar so that users do not lose their existing data. It uses HTTP server in order to store and retrieve data related to users and shared events and XMPP server with Firebase for chatting facility. Searching, archiving and managing events are inherent part of the app. User’s privacy is maintained by storing only shared events and chat related information remotely. The idea of this app is inspired by struggles of existing calendar apps which are not simplified enough to maintain user’s schedule. The information gathered can be useful for users to evaluate and improve their lifestyle. Integrating calendar with location, phone’s media and messaging creates synergic effects together and provides user with a powerful tool of organization. Hence we call the app “SuperCaly” to emphasize that it is a superior calendar application. The design decisions behind SuperCaly architecture are presented and the driving factors for such decisions and the lessons learned through the implementation process are discussed in depth.